grablife

Releases 130+ works now for me as well to boot from NVMe and without a SD card inserted. Below are my steps that I used.
 
Clear disk in case there are partitions already.
 
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/nvme0n1 bs=1M count=1 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mtdblock0 bs=1M count=1  
Create partitions, format them and set labels.
 
# create partitions parted -s /dev/nvme0n1 mklabel gpt parted -s /dev/nvme0n1 mkpart primary fat16 17m 285m parted -s /dev/nvme0n1 name 1 '"bootfs"' parted -s /dev/nvme0n1 set 1 bls_boot on parted -s /dev/nvme0n1 mkpart primary ext4 285m 100% parted -s /dev/nvme0n1 name 2 '" "' # format partitions mkfs.fat /dev/nvme0n1p1 mkfs.ext4 -F /dev/nvme0n1p2 # create labels dosfslabel /dev/nvme0n1p1 armbi_boot tune2fs -L armbi_root /dev/nvme0n1p2  
Install the existing system onto the NVMe.
Select "Boot from MTD Flash, system on SATA, USB or NVMe" Select the partition "/dev/nvme0n1p2" for rootfs and format as EXT4 Then it installs bootloader to SPI (mtdblock0) Select "Exit" instead of "Power off" Since the armbian-install command does not copy data to the dedicated /boot partition and also does not update all files, we prepare the bootfs manually.
 
mkdir /mnt/boot /mnt/root mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/root      rsync -av /boot/* /mnt/boot/ rsync -av /boot/* /mnt/root/boot/ # The set command is "fish" shell syntax set UUID (blkid -o export /dev/nvme0n1p2 | grep -E '(^UUID=)' | cut -d '=' -f 2) sed -i "s#rootdev=UUID=[A-Fa-f0-9-]*#rootdev=UUID=$UUID#" /mnt/boot/armbianEnv.txt sed -i "s#rootdev=UUID=[A-Fa-f0-9-]*#rootdev=UUID=$UUID#" /mnt/root/boot/armbianEnv.txt # not needed, installer updated to the correct UUID already #sed -i "s#UUID=[A-Fa-f0-9-]* / ext4#UUID=$UUID / ext4#" /mnt/root/etc/fstab      # Works without the next 2 steps. # /dev/nvme0n1p1 is not mounted as /boot partition and the armbian-install installed all /boot files into the /boot folder on the rootfs partition # Not sure which way is better. With or without /boot partition set UUID (blkid -o export /dev/nvme0n1p1 | grep -E '(^UUID=)' | cut -d '=' -f 2) echo "UUID=$UUID /boot vfat defaults 0 2" >> /mnt/root/etc/fstab Power off Remove SD card Boot from NVMe Output after NVMe boot.
 
root@orangepi5 ~# lsblk -f NAME        FSTYPE FSVER LABEL      UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS mtdblock0 zram0                                                                                   [SWAP] zram1                                                                      28.2M    32% /var/log nvme0n1 ├─nvme0n1p1 vfat   FAT16 armbi_boot 9A27-3D56                             128.8M    50% /boot └─nvme0n1p2 ext4   1.0   armbi_root 6df3fbd7-700a-4324-805e-b72a4c4d41ed    442G     0% /var/log.hdd                                                                                             / root@orangepi5 ~# uname -a Linux orangepi5 5.10.110-rockchip-rk3588 #trunk.0133 SMP Thu Jan 5 03:03:13 UTC 2023 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux